Officials with Nevada's gambling/hotel, mining and development industries, along with their joint partnership subsidiary, the Nevada Legislature, are very proud that lawmakers need not comply with any pesky, high-falutin' campaign finance reporting requirements of the sort required in the fancy states.
After all, it's just little old Nevada. Why should our volunteer citizen legislators have to quickly, efficiently and transparently disclose the manner in which they collect more campaign money in a single year than they themselves would earn in, oh, a decade or more? Are campaign finance reform advocates contending that a position might be unduly swayed, and a sense of perspective skewed, just because hundreds of thousands of dollars are deposited into accounts ultimately controlled by and typically bearing the names of assorted bumpkins, sycophants and self-interested opportunists? Hey! The people of Nevada elected those bumpkins, sycophants and self-interested opportunists, thank you very much.
Anyway, legislation to bring Nevada's campaign finance reporting requirements into the modern era was allowed to languish during the recently failed 2009 session of the Nevada Legislature. Oddly, legislators themselves are at a loss to explain exactly why the reforms made it through both the Senate and the Assembly yet were not reconciled and passed by session's end (Sun).
Too bad, though, whatever the reason. Because now it will continue to be difficult at best to find out how much money these people have and where they got it, and nigh impossible to discern such information by a date that would be useful to anyone. And you just know that with very little in the way of accurate, timely information, cynical Nevadans are going to continue to think of their lawmakers, inasmuch as they think of them at all, as just a bunch of filthy whores. And that sort of vulgar characterization is simply unfair to sex workers.
Campaign finance reform is important. The best law is full disclosure as soon as possible and severe penalties for not doing so. It needs to be passed in Nevada and every other state, as you point out.
But a nexus with the mining industry? Let it go, Obsessed.
Mining is not why there is no campaing finance reform. Mining did not kill Michael Jackson (relative of Gleaner?). Mining did not harbor WMD. Let it go. Join with mining to triangulate a strategy for a corp. income tax or gross receipts tax!
Posted by: Goldy | 07/07/2009 at 09:41 AM
Oh, forgot to mention...I'm only saying join with us (mining) to enact a gross receipts or corporate income tax since it takes the spotlight off my masters in the mining industry.
Posted by: Goldy | 07/07/2009 at 10:40 AM
Who is the Goldy pretending to be Goldy? My master's is not in mining.
Posted by: Goldy | 07/07/2009 at 01:01 PM